Growing up in Modesto, Benjamin J. Palmer enjoyed playing soprano bugle. So he thought of joining the Marine Corps in hopes of becoming part of its elite drum and bugle corps. Instead, he became a Marine Corps specialist in air command and control and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Palmer was three weeks into a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan and just three days shy of chalking up a quarter-century with the Marines when he was shot and killed May 12 inside an Afghan civil order police compound in Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, on the Pakistani border.

March 19, 2013 | By Tony Perry, David Zucchino and Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

HAWTHORNE, Nev. - As the U.S. has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps has considered the sprawling and remote Hawthorne Army Depot an invaluable site for realistic training - its wide-open spaces supporting live-fire exercises, its climate, elevation and terrain similar to much of Afghanistan. But with realism comes danger. On Monday night a 60-millimeter mortar round exploded at the facility outside Reno, killing at least seven Marines and injuring eight - seven Marines and a Navy corpsman.

The Army and Marine Corps on Friday ordered more than 15,000 reservists from across the country to report for duty in support of Operation Desert Shield in the Persian Gulf. The Army said it is calling up 14,006 national guardsmen and army reservists from 35 states to active duty. More than 12,000 additional troops will be called up within days, including the first combat reserve units to be activated in the gulf crisis, according to the Army.